Sunday, May 21, 2017

It's like a food court, but with table service. The Merchants of Ultimo at Broadway Shopping Centre is like a mini food court, complete with salad bar, pizzeria, rotisserie, cafe and patisserie. What most passersby don't realise is that eat in diners don't have to line up at each stall to place their order. Roving waitstaff offer complete table service, offering a clipboard menu of all offerings and a single bill at the end.

Seating inside the Merchants of Ultimo

Seating fills up quickly during peak hour. It's a cleverly designed space with plenty of timber beams, hanging greenery and tempting visuals, like legs of lamb slowly spinning on the rotisserie and pastry chefs icing bespoke cakes at the counter.

Salad station at The GardensThe Gardens has to have one of the prettiest displays of salad vegetables around, much more enticing than the usual stainless steel sandwich bar set-up.

Salad ingredients

This station isn't all vegetarian. They also churn out wagyu cheese burgers, buttermilk chicken burgers and salads mixed with woodfired chicken, rotisserie lamb and miso glazed salmon.

Valoriani Forni wood fired oven

And on a cold day, you'll relish the heat from the Valoriani Forni wood fired oven, tucked away in the corner.

Rotisserie lamb salad $17

We tried a number of dishes over a series of visits. The rotisserie lamb salad was a winner with tender shredded lamb piled high with salad greens, cherry tomatoes, quinoa, roasted corn kernels, giant golden raisins and squeaky slices of grilled haloumi. The coriander and yoghurt dressing helped everything come together.

Roast pork with woodfire corn and house slaw from Henry's Block $16

The roast pork doesn't arrive with as much crackling as we would've liked, but the Henry's Box concept is a cute idea, allowing you to pick your protein and two sides. The woodfire corn is sweet and juicy, drenched in lemon butter and covered in shaved parmesan. The house slaw of shredded celeriac, kohlrabi and fennelis refreshingly crisp.

Sweet potato fries $5

And then there are the sweet potato fries. In a city plagued with soggy imposters, these are every bit as noisily crunchy as the ones in your wildest dreams. You'll be fighting over the last one.

Digging into lunch

Making pizzas at Pizza Mario

If there's one stall that shines, though, it's Pizza Mario, run by the same folks behind Da Mario.

Potato pizza and margherita pizza ready for the oven

In the open kitchen you can watch them prepping the pizza dough, layering on the ingredients and then transferring them into the woodfired oven using a peel.

Sliding pizzas into the oven

Diavola pizza $16

There are a dozen pizzas to choose from, including a ham, mushroom and ricotta calzone and a nutella calzone for dessert. The diavola pizza packs some devilish heat with spicy salami and chilli.

Buffalo margherita pizza $16

Traditionalists will go with the classic margherita for $13 or upgrade to the buffalo margherita for $16, strewn with buffalo mozzarella and cherry tomatoes.

Pizza upskirt shot

But the magic is all in the pizza crust, super thin and almost floppy in the middle with a puffy blistered crust that has just the right amount of woodfired char.

Buttermilk chicken burger $18

The buttermilk chicken burger is a satisfying number too, a juicy fillet shielded by a crunch of knobby batter. The milk bun is soft but still still sturdy enough to hold the chicken, salad, sriracha and pudding of molten smoked mozzarella cheese.

Seating in front of Nero's Brew coffee station

Coffees are served via Nero's Brew using Single Origin beans.

Desserts from Leave it to B

And it's hard to pass up the sweet treats from Leave it to B by ex-Rockpool pastry apprentice Brendan Dewar who went on to open Brendan Dewar Patisserie in St Ives.

We've had the millefeuille and a tropical fruit dome takeaway, but the only dessert we've had eat-in was the citrus pillow, a fancy lemon meringue tart with shards of isomalt toffee. The lemon curd is bracingly sharp, just what you want against the sweet blowtorched rosettes of meringue.

My friend works just around the corner from Broadway and raves about the food choices in the shopping centre now! All I remember was the kebab shop and the Japanese joint. Looks like I'll need to get my butt back there to check out the new selection! The chicken burger looks pretty decent :)

Hi Anonymous - Nope. Not sponsored. Not an invite. All visits in this post were anonymous, unannounced and personally paid for. If it's an invite, I always disclose. I don't undertake any sponsored posts on the blog or its social media channels :)